Einstein Researchers Develop Novel Antibiotics That Don't Trigger Resistance

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.aecom.yu.edu/home/news.asp?id=317

Einstein Researchers Develop Novel Antibiotics That Don't Trigger Resistance

March 12, 2009 — (BRONX, NY) — Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of medicine's most vexing challenges. In a study described in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University are developing a new generation of antibiotic compounds that do not provoke bacterial resistance. The compounds work against two notorious microbes: Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera; and E. coli 0157:H7, the food contaminant that each year in the U.S. causes approximately 110,000 illnesses and 50 deaths.

…

In the Nature Chemical Biology study, Dr. Schramm and his colleagues tested three transition state analogs against the quorum sensing pathway. All three compounds were highly potent in disrupting quorum sensing in both V. cholerae and E. coli 0157:H7. To see whether the microbes would develop resistance, the researchers tested the analogs on 26 successive generations of both bacterial species. The 26th generations were as sensitive to the antibiotics as the first.

"In our lab, we call these agents everlasting antibiotics," said Dr. Schramm. He notes that many other aggressive bacterial pathogens — S. pneumoniae, N. meningitides, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Staphylococcus aureus — express MTAN and therefore would probably also be susceptible to these inhibitors.

While this study involves three compounds, Dr. Schramm says that his team has now developed more than 20 potent MTAN inhibitors, all of which are expected to be safe for human use: Since MTAN is a bacterial enzyme, blocking it will have no effect on human metabolism.

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[phantom power]

1. I was hoping the quorum-sensing angle would work out.

Should be a good weapon against TB then, too.

[Avalux]

2. Fantastic.

Novel new antibiotics are sorely needed and quorum sensing disruption is the best path to development. I hope their results continue to be promising; the real test will be in human trials.

[Massacure]

3. This antibiotic may be good after 26 generations

But how do we know it will be good after 26,000 generations? Just because a microbe is slow to adapt to it does not mean it will not now does it?

[Bread and Circus]

4. If this were true, it's a bit of a holy grail of infectious disease.